Rinse Cycle
by INMH
Summary: He should have known that doing laundry at Bullworth would be just as weird as everything else.


Rinse Cycle

**Rating:** PG-13/T

**Genre: **Humor/General

**Summary: **He should have known that doing laundry at Bullworth would be just as weird as everything else. Warning: Strong Language.

**Author's Note:** I don't even know.  
><strong>Disclaimer:<strong> I don't own Bully. It belongs to Rockstar Games.

[-]

If there was anything Jimmy Hopkins was good at, it was household chores.

It came with the territory when you had a mother that was more interested in getting drinks with one of her long string of new boyfriends than cleaning that potentially deadly spread of mold off the kitchen wall.

How he had survived to teenager-hood was still a mystery.

Whatever the case, it came in handy at Bullworth when one had to do their own laundry. The Boys' dorm actually had a basement, and in said basement were seven washing machines (five of which were actually functional) and seven dryers. They were there for necessity rather than courtesy; if Gary was to be trusted (and Jimmy still wasn't certain about that), the school had been forbidden to bring the boys' laundry back to the local Laundromat due to the sheer volume of such a request, which prompted the need for some other method of clothes-washing. Now only the girls' laundry was delivered to the Laundromat for cleaning, a much-vied for punishment amongst many boys (and Coach Burton).

And so, after observing for a bit and determining when he was least likely to encounter someone else, Jimmy found himself in the basement waiting for his laundry to be finished. Having a room to himself did little to block out the shouts and banging of the other boys in the dorm, and the basement was pleasantly quiet. He pulled up one of the crappy folding chairs, pulled out his notebook, and began to doodle.

So when the basement door opened again and two voices and two pairs of feet could be heard on the stairs, Jimmy hunched down a little more and pretended to be completely immersed in what he was doing, hoping that whoever it was wouldn't want to strike up conversation for the next half hour.

"I just don't want anyone to know, I get picked on enough-"

"It's okay, I don't think anyone's down here-"

"_Wait-!_"

Both voices fell silent immediately, and while Jimmy was tempted to look up (he didn't want to find out the hard way if they were Bullies), he kept his eyes on his notebook and pretended he hadn't heard.

After a moment, the footsteps resumed, and they were far too slow and hesitant to be Bullies. The nervous, meant-to-be-nonchalant whistling wasn't a Bully thing either. Jimmy heard two washing-machine lids being lifted and the sound of fabric being crammed inside, followed by a pause, probably for soap. And then, without warning, the lids were slammed shut almost simultaneously, and so loudly and quickly that Jimmy was startled and looked up.

Algie and Pedro were standing there, and evidently they had realized that the noise was enough to draw attention to them because they were both looking at him. "H-Hey, Jimmy," Algie chuckled nervously.

"Hello, sir," Pedro added with his usual timidity.

"Hey," Jimmy returned, before pointedly looking down at his notebook again. There was a long pause, and he sincerely hoped that they would just leave.

"So, like… Is it okay if we leave our laundry going while you're here?"

Jimmy looked up again, eyebrow cocked. "Do I look like the laundry-room king to you?" He asked bluntly.

"Well-" Pedro started, and Jimmy rolled his eyes.

"I don't care. I'm not going to touch your laundry."

Algie heaved a sigh of relief. "Thanks, Jimmy. Come on," He said to Pedro, grabbing the kid's hand and pulling him towards the stairs. "I've got some great stain-remover that my mom uses whenever this happens at home."

Jimmy's head shot up. He looked at the two retreating students, then to the two washers that were now chugging along, and then made a face.

_I don't want to know_.

He made a note to stay away from those washers.

A few more minutes passed before the door opened again and someone began to descend. Like before, Jimmy kept his head bent- but he did flip his gaze up to see who the person was once they hit the basement floor.

Constantinos Brakus strolled up to the fifth washer, the furthest from Jimmy's. It took Jimmy a moment to recognize him, due to the fact that he was carrying a massive, bulging cloth bag in his arms. He dropped it down onto the floor so that he could open the machine. And then- in one of the most stunning displays of stupidity Jimmy had seen since getting to this school (and that was saying something)- he pulled the head of the Bullworth Bull mascot out of the bag and attempted to shove it into the machine.

Jimmy stared at Constantinos, and then, unable to stop himself, said, "Uh… Look, man, I don't think that's going to work."

Constantinos ignored him and continued to try to shove the bull's head into the machine. Jimmy took that as a sign to shut up and go back to his notebook. He'd figured out already that Constantinos was the grumpy kind; he didn't want to figure out the hard way if he was the malicious kind too.

He had to give the guy credit, Constantinos was stubborn: He tried for at least five more minutes with the mascot's head, and then another ten with the body of the suit. The struggle ended with a loud "God_dammit!_" and the disgruntled boy stomping upstairs, dragging the sack behind him and cursing again when it got caught on a step.

Jimmy rubbed his eyes and glanced at the washing machine. He hadn't put much in, but it was still going to take another twenty minutes. He considered for a moment just stopping the machine and pulling his stuff out- Jimmy was not accepted at Bullworth by anyone but Gary, Petey, and Beatrice (and that wasn't even so much acceptance as it was creepy), and he had no desire to be alone too long with anyone who might be willing to start trouble with him. But it was only twenty minutes; surely no one else would come down in that time, right?

Wrong. So wrong.

Jimmy was getting accustomed to feeling so utterly wrong. Bullworth had a way of doing that to you.

It was a Greaser this time, Vance Medici. Jimmy only knew that because he'd heard Mrs. Peabody screaming at him the other day when he got caught skulking around inside the Girls' dorm. He picked the same washing machine Constantinos had tried and failed with. Jimmy said nothing, focusing on his notebook again until Vance spoke.

"What's cookin', new kid?" He asked, and his tone was friendly enough (or at least, not hostile) for Jimmy to venture it.

"Not much," He responded.

"You in Shop Class yet?" Petey had warned him that the Greasers were more or less obsessed with cars and bikes, and that that was their default topic-starter.

"Not until quarter two."

"Ah, sucks man. You'll like it, lots of-"

Vance stopped mid-sentence.

Jimmy had vaguely registered the sound of the door opening and someone else entering the basement, but didn't really realize who it was until he was standing right next to them: Ethan Robinson. Strangely enough, however, he seemed to be less bothered with Jimmy (the boy who had kicked his ass a week previously) and more concerned with Vance. Vance, likewise, seemed pretty cool at Ethan's presence as well.

"Robinson."

"Medici."

There was a moment of silence, with Jimmy's eyes flicking between the two boys, before Ethan coolly strode past the Greaser and opened the washing machine next to Jimmy's. He pulled out a- well, Jimmy wasn't sure what it was. It was an odd piece of clothing, a dark red, full-body outfit (and was that a mask?) that came with a pair of gloves. Jimmy glanced oddly at the other boy, but said nothing; the guy was one of the Bullies, and he wasn't confident that Vance would help him out if it came to blows. But then, Vance didn't seem to like the other boy either…

Ethan slammed the top of the washer shut, set it going, and then turned back to Vance. He then started walking, and it was Vance who started it:

"_Ninja-freak._"

Jimmy blinked, and Ethan stopped dead. Without turning around, the Bully hissed back, "_Pirate loser._"

Vance laughed nastily. "'Loser'- nice choice of words, since I kicked your ass on one leg last week."

"At least I actually have a decent sword." Ethan snapped, whirling around.

"That rubber shit from the novelty shop? You're _kiddin'_ me." Vance stormed past him, making for the stairs, and Ethan followed him.

"Better than a freaking stick!"

"I'll show you 'stick', jackass!"

"Oh yeah? Yeah?"

"_Yeah!_"

The door slammed shut and their voices were cut off.

Jimmy stared at the empty space the two boys had once occupied and blinked. "…The _fuck?_"

Barely five minutes had passed when the door flew open again, and Jimmy rolled his eyes. "Oh, come _on-_"

"I can't _believe_ you."

"You can't? _Fantastic!_ I thought you'd gotten de-sensitized to me after all these years." Jimmy gave up the ghost when he heard Gary's smug voice, slamming the notebook shut with his pencil marking the page.

He did a double-take when he saw the mass of cloth being carried between the two boys, and his mouth fell open a bit. "The _hell_ is that?"

"Jimmy-boy!" Gary said brightly as he hit the bottom step. "Good to see you. Laundry-day?"

"Are those curtains?"

"Yes," Petey sighed.

"The dorm doesn't have curtains."

"The Prefects' room does," Gary said serenely, batting his eyes in a painful attempt at appearing innocent.

Jimmy shook his head. "I don't want to know."

"No, you don't." Petey agreed.

"Well, darn," Gary said, after a moment of examining the washers. "All filled up. Guess we'll have to wait here until they're done!"

Oh _hell_ no.

Jimmy flung the door of the washer open, and it let out a loud _BZZZT_. "Here," He said, quickly yanking his clothes out of the washer. "Use this one." And then he started for the stairs.

"Jimmy, aren't you going to dry-?"

"_No!_"

Jimmy wasn't staying in the damn basement for another minute, and he sure as hell wasn't leaving his clothes unattended in the dryer with Gary there. He could always leave them on his windowsill.

"Can scorch-marks even be washed out of fabric?" He heard Petey ask as he got to the stairs.

"Yeah, no problem. I _am _a little concerned about the blubber, though; it's a pretty powerful stench, I don't know how many cycles it's going to take before we can't smell it anymore…" Jimmy reached the top and slammed the door behind him.

Screw it: He was getting a job and using the money to do his clothes at the Laundromat.

-End


End file.
